Judge Halts Sonar Testing on Whales

Published 7:00 pm, Tuesday, January 7, 2003

Three weeks of testing by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Scientific Solutions Inc. had been set to begin Wednesday a mile off the central California coast near San Luis Obispo during the whales' southward migration, but environmentalists objected.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti halted the testing and scheduled a Jan. 17 hearing to decide whether to make the order permanent.

"How do we know it's doing any damage to the whales?" Conti asked.

The National Marine Fisheries Service had approved the experiments last year.

Scientists said the whale-finding sonar could be used to keep vessels from ramming whales. Also, oil explorers who detonate undersea explosives could use the sonar to detect if whales are nearby.

"The idea that it would cause them harm is a nonsensical thing," Maureen Rudolph, a government attorney argued on behalf of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

In court papers, the government argued that the research "is intended to benefit whales."

The Channel Islands Animal Protection Association and other environmental groups, however, said the high-frequency sonar could disorient whales and separate calves from their mothers. The whales are shrinking in number and should be left alone, the association said.

"The test was another aspect of our efforts to understand what they hear and how they behave in reaction to natural and human-induced sounds," said Shelley Dawicki, spokeswoman for Woods Hole, based in Woods Hole, Mass.

In October, a federal judge here ordered the National Science Foundation to stop firing high-intensity sonic blasts into the Gulf of California because they harm whales.

And in November, the Navy agreed to temporarily scale back the testing of a new sonar system designed to detect enemy submarines after a federal magistrate halted the project.